LAST UPDATE | 29 Aug
IN 2015, COLUM Eastwood’s leadership represented a generational shift at the top of the SDLP. He was 32 then, but already it was too late.
The political trend was set.
Post-Good Friday ’98, the SDLP slowed and struggled. And, for a party that will always be remembered for the achievements of the Nobel Peace Prize winner John Hume, it has been the hardest of slogs.
Eastwood is the fourth leader since Hume – following Mark Durkan, Margaret Ritchie and Alasdair McDonnell.
And for a party that long dominated politics in the nationalist community, things will never be the same again.
A change of leader, in a few weeks time, won’t change that. The mood and the votes are elsewhere.
Sinn Féin has been running faster, and has opened a gap that won’t be closed — most NI MPs at Westminster, the largest party in local government and at Stormont where Michelle O’Neill is First Minister.
Eastwood’s high point was the 2019 British General Election.
Brexit was the dominant issue, and there was a day of reckoning for the DUP.
His party colleague Claire Hanna won South Belfast by a country mile from Emma Little-Pengelly, and Eastwood unseated Sinn Féin in Foyle.
Seats they won again in the General Election of July 2024; but Eastwood’s victory was nowhere near as convincing as last time.
He is someone I have always found comfortable in conversation; his ability to communicate one of his obvious strengths.
Eastwood is not one of those scripted politicians. He can think on his feet – always able to find the words and lines, whether in the Great Hall at Stormont, in the theatre of Westminster, or in the television and radio news studios.
And, even in these tough years, he managed to keep his party in the frame of important conversations (if not at the heart of negotiations) — something we read in a post on X by former NI Secretary of State Julian Smith.
Really sorry to read that @columeastwood is stepping down from @SDLPlive. Whilst many differences on many issues, he is an exceptional communicator & I am certain will remain a key player in the UK & Ireland political fray. ar aghaidh!
— Julian Smith (@JulianSmithUK) August 28, 2024
Smith, with former Tánaiste, Simon Coveney saved Stormont in a joint British-Irish rescue mission spanning late 2019 into January 2020.
And, in that period, on a Friday night, Smith met with Eastwood in the upstairs lounge of the Grand Central Bar in Derry — a meeting the SDLP leader described in my book ‘Political Purgatory’:
“I was grateful that we seemed to have a listening ear from a British Secretary of State for some of our key policy asks, but, more importantly, I was encouraged that we had someone in that position interested in trying to understand how this place works… trying to understand where nationalists were coming from, and I appreciated that.”
This is an example of the type of connection Eastwood was able to make; reaching into the highest level of government.
Over many years (usually during the endless negotiations about Stormont or legacy) he nearly always answered his phone when I called.
We disagree on big issues, among them my view that the Smith-Coveney rescue mission in 2020 should have been Stormont’s last chance.
And we have different positions on how to address those questions of the conflict years.
But we could agree to disagree; understand that we have different jobs.
In the North, like everywhere else, there are politicians who huff and sulk. But I have never experienced Eastwood in that mood.
His leadership years of the SDLP have been about trying to hold on and stay relevant in the politics of the North.
And that is the challenge for both the next leader of the SDLP and the next leader of the Ulster Unionist Party.
It is not about a return to those highlight years of Hume and David Trimble (who shared that Nobel Peace Prize).
Those days have gone.
These 30 years after the ceasefires of 1994 (that Hume made possible), one of the biggest challenges for the SDLP will be how it positions itself in the New Ireland conversation; a debate that is getting louder and that represents the next big decision for this place.
At 41, Eastwood has had nine years in the role of leader.
He was 11 in 1994 — that year of the ceasefires — and 15 at the time of the Good Friday Agreement.
This morning, the BBC News headline reads: Good time to step down for burnt-out SDLP leader.
Eastwood and his party have been running in heavy boots and uphill for too many years — chasing something that can’t be caught.
Brian Rowan is a journalist and author. He is a former BBC correspondent in Belfast. Brian is the author of several books on Northern Ireland’s peace process. His new book, “Living With Ghosts” is out now at Merrion Press.
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